


Only Us

by cubedcoffeecake



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mental Institution, M/M, but the wizarding world still exists, timelines are mashed so that harry and tom are close in age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 08:16:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16530830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cubedcoffeecake/pseuds/cubedcoffeecake
Summary: When Harry Potter was eleven years old, an owl brought a letter to Number Four Privet Drive. The boy had no scar, but he did have a pair of magic-hating guardians, and soon found himself in a mental asylum, rather than a magical school.





	Only Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AhaMarimbas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AhaMarimbas/gifts).



> This is a gift to the AMAZING AhaMarimbas!! She is one of our pinch hitters who swept in and took up the gauntlet when someone had to step down from the exchange. Hope you like your gift, and one last Thank You!!!
> 
> Thanks also to AkaShika for the lovely beta, and keyflight790 for coming up w the title!!

It was exactly one o’clock in the morning, and almost all was silent. The guards moved soundlessly up and down the endless corridors, and the usually troublesome patients had all been sedated when dark fell. The entire facility was cloaked with a disorienting, otherworldly stillness that seeped into your heart and soul.

Two prisoners weren’t sedated. They laughed loudly, their voices carrying far and disturbing the guards. One was a sound of delight; the other contrasted it, sharp and cruel. The guards couldn’t help the horrible pictures that came to mind about what the two may be doing to please themselves so.

  
  
  


Tom Riddle had lived in the asylum for longer than any of the staff could recall. His file said he came from an Orphanage, but it was commonly believed he’d been sent straight from Hell. His hair and features were unnaturally attractive for a boy from his background—his accent, poor and unrefined, indicated that he came from the poorest part of London. His mannerisms were crude and unkind, and he enjoyed causing those around him pain.

Harry Potter came to the asylum years after Tom, but they seemed to bond over some invisible commonality and within months, the boys were inseparable. Everyone knew Mr. Potter’s story. He was just another bully who couldn’t handle it when his cousin grew to be bigger than he was. Mrs. Dursley had been terribly distraught to leave him there, but she told them she just couldn’t manage him by herself anymore.

  
  
  


“Make them red, Tom!” Harry asks. Tom glances at him and his manic grin loses its edge, slipping into something more tender.

“You want red and gold, don’t you?” Harry nodded and Tom closed his eyes, his face slackening as he concentrated. A moment later the dancing blue and green sparks faded and red and gold ones began to fill the room instead.

Jumping off the cot, Harry tried to catch one. He was tall enough now, at fifteen, to nearly touch the ceiling. It didn’t help him against Tom’s magic though, and the sparks leaped away from his grasp every time. After several minutes Harry gave up and tackled Tom instead, knocking him into the floor and straddling him.

“C’mon Tom, let me catch one!” Tom grinned and rolled his hips up, causing Harry to roll his eyes. “Don’t you try to distract me, I want to catch one!”

“You could just make your own,” Tom pointed out.

“Or you could let me catch yours.”

“No.”

“Yes!” Harry grabbed Tom around the waist and tossed him onto the raised bed, jumping on top of him and catching his lips in a kiss.

  
  
  


Harry had arrived at the tender age of eleven, claiming that he’d received a letter saying magic was real. The doctors drugged him for it, and most of the other patients laughed; but Tom was fascinated. He believed Harry from the moment he first heard his claims, and together they spent hours and hours trying to make things move, and change color, and unlock.

Eventually, they began to succeed.

Tom had been sent to the asylum shortly out of infancy when a ceiling beam had mysteriously come untethered and killed one of his teachers. The teaching aide claimed his eyes had flashed a demonic red, and the matron of the orphanage considered it proof enough to put him behind padded walls. Thanks most likely to this previous experience he learned how to actively control his magic much sooner than Harry did—so it was Tom the others came to fear first.

At the beginning, it was just the prisoners reporting impossible “accidents” that occurred anytime they picked on Tom or Harry. These complaints were dismissed off-hand, as all of the patients were, of course, mad. When staff began to encounter the same thing, however, the boys quickly became feared.

Everything came to a head when the syringe they were using to inject Harry with his nightly sedatives exploded, the glass shards badly injuring everyone present but Harry.

No one dared to come near the two after a few more incidents like that. They slept when they wanted to, ate what they pleased, and appeared in the patients’ common area every now and then just to watch everyone scramble out of their way.

Tom loved the power, Harry loved the freedom, and they both loved each other.

  
  
  


The makeout session quickly evolved into rushed handjobs, and much to Harry’s disappointment all of the sparks had faded away by the time he’d come down from his post-orgasm high.

“You planned that, didn’t you?”

“Would I ever do that?” Tom replied with a cheeky grin. Harry sighed.

  
  
  


Their arrangement was meant to be a convenient alliance. Harry was just thirteen, and Tom halfway to fifteen. All they had on their minds was survival: shelter, food, protection.

Once they had secured these three things, they began to crave  _ more _ . Tom tortured and taunted those who had once done the same to him while Harry repeatedly left the facility to explore. Tom grew bored, and Harry always returned.

By the time a year had passed, they craved companionship, and began to seek out the other for conversation and debate. Tom’s version of more was based on power held over others, while Harry cared mostly for the power he had over himself. This problematic difference may have driven them apart if they hadn’t discovered fucking.

Tom found power over Harry to be everything he could have dreamed of—addicting, fulfilling, grounding.

Harry found that giving Tom power over himself left him freer than when he held that power himself.

  
  
  


“Do you ever want to go up there?” Harry asked. They had left the building, levitated their cot up onto the roof, and were now lying side by side watching the falling stars fly by.

“The sky?” Tom glanced over at him.

“Yeah."

“No, not much.” 

Harry continued to stare up wistfully, oblivious to the fact that Tom was watching him in much the same way.

“It’s so beautiful, and bright, and open.”

“There aren’t people up there. Nothing to do.”

“Yeah, it’d just be you and me,” Harry murmured. “We could go anywhere. Be anything.”

“I like being us,” Tom replied just as quietly. Harry glanced over and caught Tom’s eyes. “I like the home we’ve made. I don’t want a new one.”

Eyes shining in realization of what Tom meant, Harry craned his head forward just enough for their lips to meet in a chaste kiss.

“I like being us, too.”


End file.
